The Other Side
by CRUSH937
Summary: When a few of Bishop's experiments go wrong, it is up to the turtles to set them straight, and to stop the Shredder from getting his hands on them.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: So this is my first TMNT fanfic! It's just an idea I had the other day, and I thought I'd turn it into a story for you guys. I'll be merging stuff from both the 2003 and the 2012 series for this story. (I grew up with the 2003 series, but I kind of like what they did with the new one because they really brought out the "teenage" part of them.) I hope you enjoy it! =)!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own TMNT, just Rilo, and I guess, Striker.**

_Rilonda's POV_

I couldn't figure out what shocked me more: finding myself alone in a dark, filthy alley, or looking down at my body to see my whole torso and neck messily wrapped in a bunch of grimy, stained bandages. Completely disoriented and with a wave of panic coming over me, I sat where I was, leaned up against a brick wall and a dumpster, until I was able to regain control of my thoughts.

Where was I, exactly? All the noise and lights coming from the street told me that I was in some kind of overcrowded city. A multitude of people were walking by, with their gazes fixed on the ground immediately in front of them, and focused on going about their own business, completely oblivious to the rest of the world. This reminded me much of the times I used to visit my grandparents in Los Angeles, except that this place had an even more intense vibe to it, one which, before now, I would have thought to be impossible, coming from a small quiet town in Arizona. Where in the world was I?

I finally mustered up the strength to stand, holding onto the sides of the dumpster. The numbness and fatigue I felt from before was beginning to fade away, giving in to a dull kind of pain which was becoming more defined by the minute.

"Get it together, Rilo!" I scolded myself. I hated feeling as weak and helpless as I did now. I hated feeling so vulnerable. It wasn't exactly a feeling I was used to.

Back at home, I was always on top of everything. Now, well, I had a strange feeling I wasn't in Kansas anymore…

"Oh, stop being so dramatic." I hissed, angry at myself and my situation.

I felt my jeans and jacket for my cellphone, and was amazed when I felt a familiar bulge. With all the strange things that had already happened to me already, it would have been no surprise to find that I had been mugged while I was out cold.

Feeling that my luck had finally turned, I scrolled through my contacts until I arrived at the one that said "Big Sis". I clicked it, and waited for the ringing tone to start but it did not come. I felt my heart begin to race once again, but I made my best attempts to keep calm. _It's no biggie, I'll just try that again_, I thought. For the second time, I clicked to call, but nothing happened. I tried three more times in vain to call my sister, but it seemed that I was mistaken to have believed that my luck had turned so quickly.

I tried calling other people, even Mrs. Higgs, my gymnastics coach, until I was halfway through my contacts, but to no avail. I had already checked to see if I even had reception, but the bars on the top right-hand corner of the screen kept going wild. I even tried to hone in on my location through my GPS app, but again, there was no signal.

"You useless piece of garbage!" I snarled, clutching my phone furiously and slumping back down on the concrete. What was I going to do now? Not that I had much experience with big city people, but from the look on everyone's faces, I seriously doubted that they would take kindly to some random girl, who was dressed like she just came out of a meat grinder, asking them to use their cellphones. I mean, if I looked as horrible as I felt, I would surely scare the crowd into thinking that the zombie apocalypse had already begun.

I laughed a bit at the thought, and decided to shove my messy dark blonde hair into my hoodie and zip up my jacket so that nobody would be able to see my disgusting bandages. Dusting myself off as best I could, I ventured out into the sea of people.

Immediately, I felt uncomfortable. The few people who happened to be looking straight ahead caught glimpses of me, and made rather astonished expressions. Some even hesitated a bit in front of me. After several encounters like that, I decided to pull over to the side of the crowd and use my phone as a mirror. Sure enough, I had quite a bit of blood on my face. Frantically, I wiped it off with the back of my hand and cleaned it on the side of my pants.

Man, I looked terrible. Both eyes looked bruised underneath and my lips were cracked and cut. I licked them in the attempt to moisturize them a bit, wincing as they stung, until I noticed what had happened to my eyes. My once light brown eyes were now a mottled mess of black, gray, and a sickly yellow.

I ran my hands through my hair underneath my hood nervously. Granted, I had never really liked my eye color, but I really couldn't keep calm now. What had happened to me? How did I get here? My ignorance was driving me insane!

Noticing that people were starting to stare, I swiftly pulled my hood down as far as it would go, and sped off in a random direction.

I didn't even know where I was going. Upon later contemplation, the smartest thing to have done at the time would have been to go into a police station for help, but I guess I'm not what you would call a very intelligent person.

All I wanted to do was run, and not look back. I didn't care where I was running to. I just wanted to put some distance behind me, not that I knew what I was even running from.

The sun was already going down when I woke up in the alley, and by the time I slowed my pace enough to really study my surroundings, it was nightfall. I was in a slummy part of the city. Much of the buildings were run-down, and the alleyways here made the one I had woken up in seem like it had its own maid assigned to clean it twenty-four hours a day.

The place had its own threatening vibe to it, now that there was nobody walking the streets. I was starting to become frightened.

With my fingers crossed, I took my phone out of my pocket and tried calling my older sister again, but all I got from that was more frustration.

I was ready to tear my hair out now. I threw my phone to the ground furiously and sat on some nearby steps, tears beginning to form in my eyes. Breathing deeply seemed to lose its effectiveness by now, but still, I refused to let them fall. All I could do for comfort was hold my head and look down to make my world seem a little smaller.

I just couldn't believe what was happening to me. How and why did I end up in this place? Come to think of it, what was I doing the night before? I tried my best to remember what I had been doing, where I was, and who I was with, but all I got were flashbacks of bright multi-colored lights, flashbacks that made me inexplicably angry. The only explanation that occurred to me was that I had been out visiting my grandparents.

"But… this definitely isn't LA." I muttered to myself, wishing that I had paid more attention to the signs.

"And you'd be right about that, sweetheart." I jumped, startled by the raspy voice that had said that.

I looked upward to find myself completely surrounded by four men, three of which were rather scrawny, and all with matching dragon tattoos on the sides of their faces. The average built one had my phone, now sporting a fresh scratch on the side, in his hand.

"Got any other things you're willing to give us?" he said.

"Heh..." I smiled, thinking they were joking, and extended my hand for my phone. "Thanks." The men laughed mockingly, and I realized they were serious.

"We've got a joker here!" One of the skinnier ones jeered loudly, and they all laughed again.

"Give me my phone back!" I demanded with my hand still extended. Instead, they took my arm, pulled me up, and slammed me back down on the hard concrete.

I growled, instantly forgetting about my situation, and instinctively lashing out at the nearest of the four, tackling him to the ground. The other three reacted quickly, taking hold of my arms and pinning me to the ground, but leaving my legs free.

Taking the opportunity, I kicked the other two smaller men in the stomach, spun out of the fourth one's grip like I had seen football players do on TV, and bolted. However, the pain from whatever injuries the bandages on my neck and torso were covering acted up from all the movement, and slowed me enough for them to catch me again.

The one with the raspy voice took a hold of my neck and slammed me against a wall, and from the corner of my eye, I saw something glint in his hand. My eyes widened when I realized that it was a knife, but as soon as I did that, the thug eased his grip on my neck and instead held my arms. His face neared inches from mine, and looked as if he were inspecting me. I was right.

"I don't believe it…" He muttered. "We found one! I can't believe I almost killed her! Hun would have been so mad!"

"Well, looks like today's our lucky day, Striker." The one next to him laughed.

"Yes it is… Tie her up!" Striker ordered, and the other three pulled out some rope.

"Not so fast, punks!" Their thug leader looked upward, only to have his nose beat in by a bo staff launched from above.

"It's the turtles!" He exclaimed through the fountain of blood that had just erupted from his nose. "Hurry up with those ropes before they can…"

But before he could finish his sentence, I saw my opening and I took it. I punched the thug to my right on the temple and knocked him out cold.

Before I could pummel through the other two thugs that were trying to tie me up, four figures landed on top of them, flattening them on the pavement. Striker looked to and fro, from the four figures to me.

"You may have won this time, turtles, but Hun's gonna hear about this!" He hollered, backing away, and then breaking into a run in the opposite direction.

"Yeah?" One of the figures snarled. "Well nobody's gonna hear about anything when I'm through with you!" He made to chase after him, but another two held him back.

"No, let him go, Raph."

"But he's…"

"No, Leo's right. The more purple dragons there are roaming around, the more chances we have that they will lead us to them."

"Yeah, I mean, I don't like it either, but it's our best shot."

"We can't search this whole city alone."

I stood there, rooted to the spot. My instincts told me to run, but for some reason, my brain couldn't convince my legs to move even an inch. I swallowed nervously. I was staring at four giant talking turtles. Turtles!

I felt myself fall back, overwhelmed, into the wall. The turtles turned around to face me. They were each wearing different colored masks over their faces. The one in orange took a few steps forward, and we stared at each other for several long seconds, eye to eye.

"AAAAAHHHHH!" I finally screamed, and the orange-clad turtle followed suit.

"Mike, stop that!" The turtle in blue, Leo, I assumed, scolded him, and smacked him across the head. "You'll only scare her more than she already is!"

"Hey, that's my job!" Raph complained, and took another swing at him, grinning in satisfaction.

I stared, now silent, but wide-eyed, at the humanoid turtles before me. I laughed a bit out of nervousness, and my legs began to give way underneath me. Before I could fall, the two closest turtles caught me, and Mike slung me over his shoulder. The whole group then began to walk down an alleyway. I was too weak and in pain to struggle anymore, so I let them take me.

"Who are you?" I croaked, then reconsidered my words. "What are you?"

"We are the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."

**A/N: Please review! I'd love to know what you guys think! =)!**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Thanks, jakefan, for your review =)! To avoid confusion, I'm only taking certain aspects of the 2012 series, like Raphael's pet turtle, and some of the characters' personality traits (Leonardo won't be exactly as focused and responsible as they make him out to be in 2003). Everyone else, though, is pretty much like their 2003 selves (like, Mike won't be as much of an airhead).**

**Disclaimer: I forgot to do this last time =O! I do not own TMNT!**

_Leonardo's POV_

Soon after we stepped down into the sewers, the girl we had rescued from the purple dragons fell into a sort of half-asleep state. She kept on muttering strange things under her breath, and at one point, Mike swore that he heard her growling.

"I'm serious, you guys!" He insisted. "This is creeping me out! Karai said that Bishop himself declared his guinea pigs were unstable! What if she attacks? What if she goes all berserk on us like the last ones?"

"Well maybe if you'd stop calling them 'guinea pigs', Mike, they wouldn't keep getting so offended." Don pointed out.

"Whatever, one of those guys almost had Klunk for dinner…" he protested.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but Mike's right." I agreed. "Maybe we should have tied her up with that rope that the purple dragons dropped."

"Oh, come on Leo," laughed Raphael. "Are you telling me that you're scared of a girl who can't even stand on her own two feet?"

As if on cue, her body made a harsh and sudden twitching movement along with a vicious barking sound, startling both Raphael and Michelangelo. They both jumped about three feet in the air and Mike accidentally dropped her into the sewage.

"Nice going Mike." I sighed, picking her up myself, not trusting Mike to do it anymore. _Oh well_, I thought, _at least that ought to shut Raphael's trap for the rest of the trip._

When we finally got back to the lair, I went through with my idea of tying her up. I wasn't about to have a replay of the events from the last time we brought some of Bishop's test subjects home. As I tied her wrists up to a pillar, I thought of the other two that we had rescued from a large group of Foot ninja.

Their names were Francis and Marco. We had been tracking the Foot when they found the two men dumped on the side of an abandoned warehouse. At this point, we had no idea what was going on, and it wasn't until we followed them back to their base, where they met up with Karai and the rest of the Foot clan, that we found out.

"Yes, Master Shredder will be pleased with your success." We heard Karai say through an open window at the top of the Foot base.

"If I may ask, Miss Karai, what is our master planning to do with Bishop's test subjects?" asked one of the Foot ninja who had brought them in. "They were only failed experiments. That is the reason he is getting rid of them in the first place, is it not?"

"That may be so, but the only reason he declared them 'failed' is because the fool could not control them." She replied. "However, I doubt that will be a problem for Master Shredder."

"That's all we need to hear to know that we have to put a stop Shredder's plans." Raph whispered to us. "We can't let him get a hold of them. Who knows what he wants them for?" He then made for the window, but Donatello stopped him.

"Wait up, Raph." He said.

"Wait up for what?" he protested, again trying to get past Don.

"We need to know exactly what he plans to do with them." He pointed out.

"Oh, come on Donnie." Mike piped in. "We already know from experience that whatever he's planning, it's not gonna be good news for us."

"Quiet down, you guys!" I snapped. Through all their fussing, I was attempting to listen in as Karai explained Shredder's general plan, but by the time they all stopped quarreling, all I was actually able to hear clearly was:

"And with the turtles out of the picture, nothing will stand in our way."

"See? I totally called it!" yelled Mike, drawing the attention of the entire mass of Foot ninjas in the base.

"Mike!" We scolded, and smacked him across the head in frustration.

"Too bad, our cover's blown." I said. "Time to get down there and kick some shell!"

With that, all four of us dropped down the window and unleashed some serious ninja fury. Raphael was the first one down, knocking out at least a third of the ninja that immediately came after us before the rest of us even hit the ground.

Mike took the next move, taking three ninjas on at once while Don and I cleared a path for Francis and Marco, who were tied up and out cold next to Karai.

"You!" exclaimed Karai. "How did you find this place?"

"Let's just say that your Foot clan doesn't exactly make their ninjas like they used to!" I replied.

In dismay, she unsheathed her swords and took a fighting stance. Donatello made to swipe the kunoichi off her feet, but she dodged and kicked him back, where he was surrounded by a large group of Foot ninja.

"Don!" I called, but he shook his head and motioned for me to go for the captives.

"I'll be fine!" he said. "Get to them, quickly!"

And quick, I'd have to be, because with every passing second, more enemy ninja flooded into the room. Even Raphael was starting to get overrun, and Mike was already trapped in a corner, fending off an endless barrage of deadly attacks.

I broke into a run towards Karai, and just as she judged that it was time to strike, I jumped out of her way, kicked off the nearest wall, and tackled her from the side. We both bashed through a score of foot ninja that were attacking Mike, and I parted from her as soon as I could.

Leaving her to struggle to get untangled from all the ninja that had gone down with her (which became much harder for her, with Mike going through them, and using her head as leverage at one point), I dashed towards their prisoners. Mike and I each slung one over our shoulder and called for the others to retreat. We had what we came for.

Raphael and Donatello cleared a path for the door and we hurried out, where April was already waiting for us with the chopper. We climbed aboard the rope ladder and took off, but with one too many ninja. An enemy was clinging to the bottom-most bar of the ladder, and I'm pretty sure that it was a move he thoroughly regretted.

Pretending not to notice him at first, Michelangelo waited until we had reached a very high altitude. Only then did he turn down to face him with a mischievous smirk on his face, and kicked him square in the face until he finally let go.

We listened to his screaming as he fell a great distance, but then noticed that he landed in a full garbage truck, breaking his fall.

"Aw, bummer…" Raph muttered, disappointed that he had probably not broken very many bones. "Oh well, at least you gave him a good nose bleed!"

When we got back to the lair with the two men still tied up, we decided that it would be a better idea to free them and let them rest until they woke up.

We were wrong.

As soon as they awoke, we tried to explain to them what we knew, but Mike made the mistake of calling them guinea pigs. Francis's pupils turned into slits, and he started wreaking havoc upon the lair. He was worse than Casey on a rampage, and we could hardly hold him down. He was unnaturally strong. And if one psychopath wasn't enough, Francis's chaos managed to scare Marco into going into a rampage of his own.

"Well it's no wonder Bishop couldn't manage these guys! They're completely out of control!" I yelled over the sound of their screaming and broken glass (so much for our entertainment system).

Marco stole one of the swords from my sheaths while Mike, Casey, and I were wrestling Francis to the ground, and used it to cut Raphael's punching bag to shreds. However much that stung him, he kept his head, that is, until he attempted to kebab Spike and Klunk on my sword. Now there were three of the rampaging menaces in the lair.

"Oh, that is it!" Raph growled, and launched himself at Marco, saving his pet turtle and Mike's cat, and tackling him into the pool, my sword now hurling dangerously through the air.

"AAAHHH!" April shrieked as she ducked to dodge the sword, which struck the wall only inches from her head.

"Enough!" Demanded Master Splinter, and with a jab to Francis's neck, put him to sleep.

Soon after, Raphael emerged victorious from the pool, having knocked Marco over the head with a pipe, and who was now out cold as he tossed him onto the concrete.

"What a mess!" April breathed, hardly believing the disaster that the two had caused. "Tell me again, Donatello, why it is we brought them back to the lair? I mean, seriously, you needed a lift for _this_?"

"Like I told you over the shell cell, the Shredder is planning something with those guys." He responded.

"And from the sound of it, there's a lot more of them." I added, recalling the few things I was able to hear Karai explain to the Foot Clan. "Both the purple dragons and the Foot will be on the lookout for anyone with injuries on the neck and torso, and most importantly, with deformities in their eyes."

"Deformities in their eyes?" repeated Donatello in question, and proceeded to lift one of Francis's eyelids. "Hey, you're right! This one's got a bunch of weird black and gray blotches all over his irises, and I seriously doubt that orange was his original eye color. Weird…"

"Oh my goodness…" whispered April. "Just what did that monster, Bishop, do to these poor people?"

"I don't know, but is anyone thinking what I'm thinking?" Don said.

"Well that depends! If you're thinking, holy shell, these jerks almost ate my poor little Klunk, then yes! I think we're all on the same page here!" Mike cried indignantly, cradling his terrified cat in his arms.

"No, Mike." I answered, and smacked him over the head, though only half-heartedly. "We're thinking…"

"Leatherhead…" The rest of us said in unison.


	3. Chapter 3

_Rilonda's POV_

I woke up with my head pounding like it never had before, like it was going to tear wide open or something. Although my vision was blurred with tears from the splitting pain, I could tell that I was in a completely different place. Blinking my watery eyes clear, I looked around my new location. There were yellow pillars everywhere with strange blue markings, one of which I soon found that I was tied to.

"Hey! What's the big idea?" I shouted, then struggled to remember what had happened.

_Okay, so I woke up a freak show in some kind of alley, ended up in a sketchy part of town_, I thought, and raided my brain for the second half of my misadventure. _Uh, let's see… I ran into a few thugs– ugh, what I wouldn't do to give those jerks a good pounding– and… butt-kicking turtles? Nah, I was probably being delusional, maybe from a lack of water… my throat is pretty parched… but…_

"My phone!" I thought out loud. "Where's my phone? Oh, they took it, those lousy goons!"

"No, they didn't." A voice from somewhere behind the pillar answered. "We picked it up before we left."

"Who's there?" I called. "Untie me, now!"

"No, we're not making that same mistake again." He said, coming into view. It was one of the humanoid turtles who had rescued me. I stared in disbelief. "The last time we set one of your kind loose, well, let's just say we're going to need refurnishing."

"One of my kind? What are you even talking about?" I pressed on, becoming more and more irritated by the way he, Leo, I believed, was talking to me. "Who are you people?"

"We told you already!" Another turtle, the one with the orange mask, came into view. I struggled to recall his name from the last time I had seen them. "We're the teenage mutant ninja turtles!"

"Oh gosh, I… I think I'm gonna hurl…" I said, feeling a sudden wave of nausea.

"What? Is the idea that much revolting to you, or something?" The turtle in red, who had just walked in with the one in purple and two humans, inquired angrily. "Do you have a problem with us, even after we saved your sorry…"

But what was so "sorry" about me, I never discovered, because whatever I had eaten for dinner interrupted his sentence.

"Aw dude, that is just nasty!" said the one in orange. "I'm not cleaning that!"

"Nobody's telling you to, Mike." Leo pointed out.

"But since you insist…" The one next to him said with a smirk.

"No way, Don!" He responded. "I mean, ew, just… no. It looks like she threw up her insides or something!"

"Oh, wow! Mike actually made a worthwhile observation!" The one in red laughed. "Go figure!"

"No, Raph, he's right!" Don said with a surprised tone. "This stuff looks weird! I should study it. It could tell us something about what Bishop did to these people."

"Ughhh… well can you study it later? I'm not exactly enjoying lying here in my own vomit!" I said through another wave of nausea.

"Oh, right." Don muttered, and moved to untie me. "I mean, she looks normal enough, so far."

"No, Don." Leo commanded, halting him. "So did Marco, remember? But that changed pretty quickly."

"Oh, just untie me already! You guys are treating me like I'm dangerous or something!" I was starting to get angry. "Are you crazy?"

"Are _you_?" He asked.

Suddenly, keeping my anger down became a whole lot harder than I had ever remembered, and it came crashing down on me in an instant. I couldn't do a thing about it. My vision became a dark blur, not that it mattered, because I don't think I was seeing with my eyes anymore. It was a strange feeling. My head was pounding, but not exactly with pain, and I felt like I was having a sort of out of body experience, just floating away from everything. It all felt unreal.

There was noise in the background, like distant voices shouting, along with broken glass, and maybe splitting wood, but I couldn't really pin-point the source. I was just too far gone. I couldn't even formulate words in my mind, and if I actually tried to talk, everything just came out in a throaty slur or a high-pitched croak. Guessing that I would just have to wait it out, I let these feelings take over with no struggle at all.

Little by little, the noise in the background became more defined to the point where I discovered that it wasn't background noise at all. All the screaming and shattering was happening right in front of me, and I was the one causing it. Surprised, I tried to fight whatever had come over me, and mustering up all of my energy, I did my best to focus on controlling my body once again.

After much struggling, my vision gradually cleared up, and I dropped to the ground, my body too sore and exhausted to continue standing. I rolled on my side, groaning and clutching my stomach and head as a terrible jolt of pain struck me.

"Oh… What happened?" I whined, half wishing that I hadn't snapped myself out of that trance.

"Hey, check it out, you guys! It looks like we didn't have to knock her out like we had to with the others!" Don said.

"Yeah, well I wouldn't be too sure." Said a male voice I didn't recognize, approaching me from behind. However, I was too engulfed in pain to care.

"Casey! What are you doing? Don't hit her!" said another. "She's obviously back to normal."

"I wouldn't count on it, April." Raphael warned.

"No, no." Don said. "Maybe we should try and see if she has come around. I mean, what else can she even destroy anymore? I think we ran out of furniture already anyway, and so far, I don't think any of these guys are out specifically to hurt others, just to destroy stuff."

The turtles and a man with a hockey stick surrounded me and turned me over. Still clutching my stomach with my right hand, I noticed that I wasn't tied to the pillar anymore, and judging from the blood on my wrists, I must have torn out of them somehow. I also noticed that my vomit-stained jacket had by some means slipped off of me, perhaps pulled by one of them in an attempt to hold me back, but that wasn't the point. The point was that I was now wearing nothing but those grimy bandages as a top. I got up quickly and backed away, covering my chest and blushing heavily, not that I was actually showing anything. It was just highly uncomfortable.

"Um… Where's my jacket?" I asked meekly.

"Pft… It's yours if you can find it under all of this mess you just caused." Raph answered grumpily.

"I'm sorry…" I whispered, looking around in vain to find anything I could drape myself with. Finally giving up, I settled for using my long hair to cover where I felt most exposed.

We stood around in awkward silence for what seemed to be the longest few seconds in history, and it was the red-head who finally broke the ice.

"What's your name now?" She asked. "I'm April, this is Casey…" She then proceeded to name off all of the people in the room, not that I didn't already know their names. A proper introduction (or as proper as it gets in a situation like this), however, was rather settling.

"Um, hi. I'm Rilonda… Rilo for short."

"Well, Rilo, follow me." She said with an uneasy smile, and pulled me away from the others into a large bathroom, with the others watching us nervously as we went off on our own. April then handed me a towel and a change of clothes from a cabinet, along with shampoo.

"Thank you. This is the first kind thing anyone has really done for me since I woke up here." I told her, expressing my gratitude.

She turned to leave, but I asked her to stay. However embarrassed I found myself, I wasn't in a hurry to be alone, especially with the others wandering around. The one in the red gave me an especially bad vibe. With April, I felt safe. Maybe it's because she was the first one who hadn't done anything to me yet. The fact that she was a woman helped, too.

April turned around while I stripped my clothes and stepped into the shower. As soon I did, however, I saw whole lot of small holes on my neck and torso where it looked like needles had been inserted, along with an ugly set of scars and fresh bruises. I assumed, however, that the bruises had come from the beating I took from the turtles and that man, Casey, when they had tried to knock me out in my trance state.

"So… I hate to bring this up, but what exactly did Bishop, you know, do to you?" She questioned, finally speaking after a period of silence.

"B-Bishop?" I asked, massaging my temples and starting to feel like my control over my body was slipping again. I collapsed in the bathtub, soap getting into my eyes. "Bishop! Uh… Ow!"

" Are you okay in there, Rilo?"

"Yeah, I'm… uh… I'm fine." I assured her, flushing my eyes with water. "Just a little soap in my eyes, is all."

"That sure didn't sound like 'just a little soap'…" she commented.

Actually, the soap is what saved me. For some reason, that name did things to me. I could not recall who this "Bishop" was, but it seemed to incite dangerous and volatile emotions inside me. Had it not been for the stinging of the soap that took me by surprise and helped give me something to focus on, I might have gone crazy like before, which would not have been good news for me, especially because of the fact that I was naked. Now _that_ would have been embarrassing.

I decided to explain to April what had just happened to me, and what it felt like to be in the trance I had gone into before. I also told her about how I woke up in an alley, not knowing where I was or how I got there.

"I mean, I just woke up, and I was so confused and scared. I didn't know what to do." I said. "I tried calling my big sister. She always knows what to do, but I couldn't get a hold of her. I couldn't get a hold of anyone."

"Well, if it helps any, you're in New York City." She clarified. "In the sewers, to be exact."

"New York City!" I burst in disbelief. "How in the… How did I get here? I'm from Arizona! That's nowhere near here!"

"Arizona, huh?" She mused. "Well, the guys and I believe we may have the explanation for that."

"Really?" I asked, surprised, despite the fact that the whole time, they seemed to be doing everything with purpose, like they already knew what was going on. "Please, tell me what you know!"

She explained everything that she said Leonardo heard from a woman named Karai, and then proceeded to recount their clashes with Bishop, making sure to be careful not to use his name.

"Wow, what a creep… So he abducted me for experimentation? Seems ironic, you know, what with trying to protect humanity from an alien invasion, yet he's doing all this weird stuff himself with his own people." I said, considering what she had just told me. "And it doesn't make me feel any better knowing that he was the one doing it. I mean, just the fact that anyone would do such a thing is terrifying, at best, but that guy… ugh."

"I couldn't agree more."

"That still doesn't explain why my phone was acting up, though." I pointed out.

"Maybe it does." She suggested. "Maybe he meddled with it on purpose, knowing you'd struggle with it, that sick man, if you can even call him a 'man', that is."

"Maybe…" I said, and although based from what she told me, it didn't seem improbable, I was still unconvinced.

I dried off and got dressed inside the shower so that it wouldn't be any more awkward than it already was, though I've got to say, she was really nice about it. Not everyone is kind and sensitive enough to understand why a complete stranger would want you to keep them company while they showered. That's probably why I stuck to her like glue after we left the bathroom.

As soon as I stepped outside, clinging to the back of April's shirt as a needy cat clings to its owner's pant leg, I heard somebody snickering. Turning to see who it was, I spotted Michelangelo as the culprit.

"And what are you laughing at?" I snapped.

"Nothing, it's just that, uh…" he trailed off, unable to finish his sentence as he was overcome with laughter.

"What he means to say is that you look like a total dork in April's clothes." finished Raphael rudely.

"Hey!" April and I protested.

"What? She's drowning in them!" He continued.

"Why are you getting so offended, April?" asked Mike. "We're not making fun of you; we're making fun of Rilo!"

"Because they're _my_ clothes! Granted, they are a bit old and stretched out, but still." She explained. "And stop making fun of Rilo. She's been through enough already without you two giving her a hard time."

"Yeah, turtle dweebs, knock it off." I added, but I was smiling. I was actually enjoying their teasing. Well, maybe not Raphael's, but Mike seemed different, like he meant no harm.

Still keeping close to April, I followed her to the center of the place, where I saw a sight that shocked me even more than that of the four giant turtles: a giant talking rat, and a giant talking alligator!

"…and we fear that they have been subjected to the same kind of experimentation that you were in his lab. They show the same signs as you do, after all." The rat was talking to the alligator.

"Yes, the pupils of their eyes narrow when they become angry, just like yours, not to mention that they don't even know what they're doing when they become angered." Leonardo explained.

"I see… So you brought me here to see if I may teach them to control it." said the alligator.

"That, and to see if maybe they will open up to you, seeing as you have been subjected to the same experimentation." added the rat.

"I'll see what I can do." He said. "I am no master myself. I still have sudden unintended outbursts every now and then."

"Um, are they talking about me?" I whispered to April, though not as silently as I had hoped.

"Ah, there is one of them now." The rat pointed me out, and I quickly hid behind April, peeking only slightly from the side of her shoulder. She smiled.

"Don't be scared." She said reassuringly. "This is Master Splinter, and that is Leatherhead."

"Um, hi?" I mumbled, getting a little frustrated with myself. This wasn't at all like me. Granted, I was never the most extroverted of people, but I never felt this timid before. All I wanted to do was find a nice, secluded corner of the room to hide in. Deciding that I should probably cut it out as soon as I was able, I pulled the hoodie of the large dark gray sweater that April had lent me over my head. This made me feel slightly more confident than I did before.

"Hello. My name is Rilo." I said louder this time.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Rilo." He answered, and bowed slightly. I returned the gesture.

"So I overheard that you had the same trouble with B-Bi…" I started, but I couldn't finish his name without getting the same strange pounding in my head that I had felt before, so I stopped to reconsider my choice of words. "I heard that you went through the same thing I did."

"Yes, I did, and it seems we share many similarities with the… effects… of his experimentation." He observed, judging by the trouble I had saying his name. "That horrid name bothers me, too."

I smiled. It looked like I wasn't alone in all of this, which reminded me about the fact that they kept referring to my "kind", as Leonardo put it, in plural.

"Are there any others like me here?" I asked, and Splinter confirmed. "May I see them?"

"That's not a good idea." voiced Leonardo.

"Why not?" I questioned.

"We don't know how stable they are yet." He explained.

"Shell, we don't even know if you're stable, yet we're letting you walk around here, free as ever." supported Raphael grudgingly. "Goodness knows, you might help yourself to tearing up yet another stack of my magazines any minute now!"

"The three of you even did more damage than you, Leatherhead!" said Mike.

"Raphael! Michelangelo!" Master Splinter scolded, giving them a warning look.

I was about to object, but one glance around the room shut me up pretty good. There were still large piles of broken furniture lying around, along with smaller swept-up mounds of glass and some broken CD's. I frowned with guilt.

"Look, I'm awfully sorry about all this. I didn't mean to do any of it." I said sincerely. If my sister had seen the disaster I had just made, she'd have had my head. "If there is anything I can do to help, anything at all, I'll do it. Just tell me."

"You may begin by training with Leatherhead to suppress that anger of yours, and perhaps even learn to use it to your advantage." proposed Splinter. "It seems that entering that state gives you increased strength, even past what my strongest son, Raphael, can muster."

"Yeah," laughed Mike, "he thought he could take you down all by himself and got his shell handed to him! It took three of us to hold you down, and you still escaped our hold!"

"Shut it, Mike!" growled Raphael, going red in the face, even with his dark green hue of skin. "Or I'll serve your shell on a platter!"

"Yes, if you can only control it, you could become quite the warrior." Splinter said, smiling at my astonished face.

"Wow… did I really..?" I muttered as I studied Raphael's powerful-looking figure, and turned to April for confirmation. She nodded. "Woah…"

"Well, at least that answers what Bish- I mean, uh, he, was trying to accomplish." Donatello said, and both Leatherhead and I twitched violently at the accidental usage of his name. "He must have been trying to prefect that super-soldier project of his, and decided to use other people besides clones of himself to see if they had different effects, using DNA samples from Leatherhead and the same procedures. He must have gone wrong there, because my guess is that those procedures are what make his subjects so violent and short-fused."

"You know, I was gonna say something like, 'thank you, Captain Obvious', but you kind of lost me at the last part of your geek talk." said Michelangelo.

"Oh, come on Mike. It's fairly straightforward, even for you." Don pointed out. "It's the best explanation as to why they both react the way they do to his name. They despise him, even in their subconscious."

"True. I can't remember what he looks like, not even what it was that he did to me, for that matter." I admitted. "Yet, every time I hear his name, I start to boil up inside. I can't help it."

"Yes, it is the same with me, except that I do have memory of all the horrors he put me through." Leatherhead said.

"He must have somehow wiped Rilo's memory clean of anything that he did to her before abandoning her in that alley." Leonardo suggested.

"That would explain why I couldn't recall a thing." I said. "I'm kind of glad he did, though. I wouldn't want to remember any of those… horrors."

Shivering at the thought, I sat down on the half-salvaged blue sofa. My head was pounding again, but this time in pain. I never thought that pain would be a relief, and why would I? I never exactly pictured myself in the New York City sewers talking to four humanoid turtles, a giant rat, and an alligator with anger management problems, all because of some crazy, extraterrestrial-obsessed psychopath who decided it would be a good idea to try and convert people into some kind of super-soldiers, and instead turned up with a bunch of monstrous disasters.

I didn't know where my life was heading at this point, not anymore, but something told me that I didn't want to find out, and how right I was. I most certainly was in for the craziest times of my life.


	4. Chapter 4

_Raphael's POV_

"Look at her, all smug as shell, curled up in about the _only_ piece of furniture she didn't total." I muttered grudgingly to Mike, who was lying next to me on the softest spot of floor we could find for the night. We wouldn't start refurnishing until morning. "Why can't she sleep on the floor instead?"

"Relax, Raphie-boy." He answered sleepily. "She probably didn't even notice when she dozed off."

"Yeah, well, who asked ya?"

"You did." He yawned. "Go to sleep already."

"Whatever."

But I couldn't sleep, and it wasn't for lack of trying. After about an hour, I lost count of how many times I had tossed and turned, so I decided to head topside to stretch my legs a bit. I'd be a nice change, with none of my brothers following me around.

I slipped out of the lair without incident; Splinter, my brothers, and Leatherhead were all asleep. I would finally be able to relax by myself, something that was near impossible to do with three meddling brothers and an over-protective father. When I finally reached the surface, I took the usual route, but regretted it once I jumped the first four roofs.

"Leo, what are you doing here?" I asked, surprised that he had pulled this move before I did. He turned my way, still sitting on the ledge, not bothering to get up.

"I should be asking you the same question." He answered. "Anyway, I just came here for some fresh air."

"Same here, bro." I said, and sat next to him on the ledge, facing down at the huge lit city. "So why are you really here?"

"What do you mean?" He questioned, but he knew he couldn't fool me. I knew all of his habits, like any real brother would.

"Oh, come on Leo. Spill it." I pressed. "I know something's up. What is it?"

"Of course." Leo laughed slightly, giving in. "Well, truth is, I've got a really bad feeling about all of this."

"About the three newcomers?"

"About everything." He confessed. "I just feel that whatever's coming our way this time, whatever Shredder's planning…"

Leo hesitated, chewing his tongue in thought. "I don't like it, Raph. I don't like it at all, and it's like I'm becoming more paranoid with every passing minute. It doesn't help that we have to deal with those psychos either. Every time one of them makes even the slightest move, my palms start sweating, just thinking about what they'll do next, and I'm not talking about breaking things. The three of them could kill somebody in one of those rampages, Raph, if they wanted to. We can't even tie them up anymore, because they just break loose as if the ropes were made out of paper. You know how frustrated I get when I… when we are not in control."

"You heard Donnie. They're not interested in bashing heads, just property." I pointed out, but then, with more concern, added, "except for maybe pets, I don't know…"

"But they'll do it if they feel tempted."

"Just… Don't worry about old Shred-Head, Leo. We've beat him once, we can beat him again." I assured. "And don't you worry your little green head over Rilo, or any of those nut jobs, for that matter. We'll find a way to deal with them. Maybe Donnie can develop some kind of restrainer or something, and there's also Splinter's training plan."

"I know, I know… we will have to pull through, either way." He said. "I'm just worried, that's all."

"You've always been the type to worry about everything. Keep doing that and you'll wear yourself out." I explained. "Don't forget you're our fearless leader."

"I always thought you meant that sarcastically." Leo laughed again.

"Ah, well… It's half and half, you know?"

There was a long period of silence as Leo was apparently taking it all in. I watched him as he stared down at the city, still biting his tongue, a habit that he had recently developed. I often jokingly warned him against, telling him he'd bite his tongue off one of these days, and he'd never be able to boss us around again, not without carrying a blackboard and some chalk.

"So what's bothering you?" He finally asked, shifting the spot light.

"You know, the usual… 'bout to bust my lid." I breathed.

"I'm guessing I already know what it is you're steaming on about."

"And I'm guessing that you're guessing right." I muttered. "I can't stop thinking about her. She's invaded my mind or something, like a parasite, prancing along in there like it's nobody's business."

"Woah, Raph…" Leonardo looked at me in surprise.

"W-what? No, not like that! Why would you even think that?" I stammered, feeling that my face was starting to flush. "Parasite, I said! It's a bad thing!"

"Good, because I was just about to point out that people like us have zero chance with humans, being mutants and all."

"As if… Stupid blonde thing, with her… stupid face and her stupid freaky eyes and her stupid… stupid..." I sighed. "How could I let her beat me up? She doesn't even know how to fight! That was so stupid…"

"It wasn't that bad, Raph, she just knocked you off your feet."

"Yeah, and sent me crashing through Don's computer desk!"

"See? That's what I'm talking about!" Leo threw his hands up. "You tell me not to worry about them, and look at you."

"Oh, I'm not worried." I clarified. "Far from it, I'm gonna pay her back in full, with interest, even, as soon as I get the chance, and I think I will pretty soon, with that temper of hers. I'll be ready."

"And how will you be ready? You can't exactly triple your muscle mass overnight, you know." He argued. "They're not chia pets."

"Hey, I'm not Mike! You'll just have to wait and see." I grinned at my brother, glad he had managed to keep hold of at least some of his poor sense of humor, and stood up, feeling unwound and ready to return to the lair. "It's time to hit the sack. Coming?"

"That is, if you're even lucky enough to find one, now. Seriously, those guys rank second only to the mousers in home destruction." He said, taking my outstretched hand and standing up.

"Tell me about it. And speaking of which, I hope you like your bedding extra firm, 'cause extra firm is all you're gonna get, at least 'til tomorrow."

"Well, I call the squishy mat in front of the couch." Leo declared.

"No dice, bro. Mike hogged the whole thing and I can't move his shell even an inch."

"Then between the two of us, he'll be surprised to wake up in the bathtub, now, won't he?" Leo flashed a rare, mischievous grin.

"Hehe… It's not like we're not doing him a favor!" I said, breaking into a smile of my own. With that, we both made our way back home with a lighter load on our chests, glad to have confided in each other.


End file.
